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Familiar as I am with Dr. Lombardi's way of working—from debates that unfold within the psychoanalytic society of which we are both members—I know he is aware that the style of his clinical presentation can give the “impression that [his] clinical perspective may excessively neglect the relational dynamics of the analytic couple and the analyst's own subjectivity.” As he himself maintains, he tends to “prioritize an examination focused on objective phenomena,” with the aim of “counterbalancing certain subjective influences that distort or hamper the psychoanalytic process” (Lombardi 2003a, p. 1545).
My intention is not to enter into the articulated contemporary debate between subjectivity and objectivity in the analytic process. Rather, my goal is much narrower: to try to clarify the model of mental functioning that underlies his clinical presentation, that is, what his conception of the psychoanalytic process and therapeutic technique are.
My first consideration is that the concreteness of Dr. Lombardi's presentation is functional, that is, necessary to his theory of the mind. The concreteness of the narration allows him, essentially, to provide evidence of the concreteness of the facts that occur in the mind in its primitive functioning; there is a consistent overlap between the realism of his description and the (supposed) reality